Ben Machell on style and sartorial dilemmas

I am not a naturally elegant man. These cool clothes? A stylist made me wear them in order to deceive readers into thinking I’m some kind of urbane metropolitan dandy. But no. No, the truth is that most of the time I have the bland, crumpled, slightly sweaty vibe of a geography teacher who’s been living in his car while his marriage collapses.

It wasn’t always like this. When I moved to the capital, many years ago, it didn’t take long for me to realise that, sartorially, I was going to have to dig deep. This was mainly because on my first day of living in fashionable east London, I went to buy a pint of milk wearing a baggy Leeds United top and pair of Bermuda shorts and a group of hipsters literally pointed and laughed at me, although presumably after surreptitiously checking the latest issue of iD to make sure that ‘Benidorm Chic’ wasn’t actually a thing. It wasn’t. I can still hear the sniggers.

Thus began a cycle of Bowie-esque stylistic reinventions. First, I tried to get on board with the then-popular 1940s vintage thing, but only succeeded in looking like Nicholas Lyndhurst in Goodnight Sweetheart. Plus wearing braces gave me a permanent wedgie. After that, I toyed with a terrace casual look, which was fine until I started to get obsessive about sourcing rare Japanese Fred Perry polo tops that have three buttons rather than the usual two because honestly, once you’ve worn a polo top with three buttons you just can’t go back. I finally got a grip and decided that I actually wanted to look like a Parisian philosophy student from 1968 so bought a load of very simple, very chic, very pricey French clobber which, in the cold light of day, didn’t remotely fit me because, frankly, I have a big arse and like pies too much to pull off the bony, retro, intellectual look.

So then I went rogue and tried to develop a series of looks using whatever was left in my wardrobe: sexy angler, psychedelic scout leader, normcore football manager… some really quite fashion-forward stuff. But then you take your eye off the ball for five minutes, have a couple of kids and — boom! — the next thing you know you’re pioneering the depressive teacher look. But maybe if I just sit tight it’s a style that will eventually have its day. Maybe.